Chapter 341: London Shaken! The Expert Group's Confusion!

Meanwhile!

While the live broadcast in the United States was intensifying, on the other side of the Earth in London, in the corridor of the Police Headquarters!

A young officer was jogging through that corridor, illuminated a deathly pale by fluorescent lights!

His leather shoes struck the plastic floor, making a rapid "tap-tap-tap" sound!

It echoed back and forth in the empty corridor.

His right hand held a tablet, and on the screen was a live broadcast currently playing—Chu Chen stood on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, behind him was that line of constantly shrinking numbers, and below the stage were two thousand eight hundred frenzied people!

His left hand clutched a freshly printed fax, the edges of the paper crinkled from his grip.

Because he was jogging, the doors on both sides of the corridor receded one after another.

Finally, he stopped in front of the door at the end of the corridor.

The sign on the door read: Special Action Group—In Meeting.

Perhaps because he was too anxious, he didn't knock and pushed the door open directly!

The lights in the conference room were just as deathly pale.

The documents spread out on the long table were much the same as they had been a few hours ago, only with a few more empty coffee cups and a crumpled ball of tissue paper.

The four squares on the whiteboard were still there; the first two were already filled, and the last two remained blank.

The curtains were drawn, and outside the window was the darkness of London's late night; the rain had stopped, though no one knew when, but traces of raindrops still remained on the window.

The people sitting around the long table remained in their previous order.

It was evident that they had not rested for a long time.

Liu Xuemin leaned against the back of his chair, his bloodshot eyes behind his silver-rimmed glasses staring at the laptop screen in front of him.

Chen Zijin's notebook was turned to a new page, covered in new spiral lines and a few scattered keywords.

Chen Xiong's coffee cup sat on his right, thin wisps of heat rising from the rim, but he hadn't drunk it. Zhuang Yan's bandage had been replaced with a new one, blindingly white.

Shui Ge sat in the corner, holding his phone; the blue light from the screen made his face look like a wax figure.

And Wesley stood in front of the whiteboard, still gripping that marker, the cap still not replaced!

"Clang!"

The moment the door was pushed open, everyone looked up at the officer who had rushed in.

He stood at the doorway, gasping for breath.

His face wore an expression that only appeared during emergency reports, a mix of nervousness and excitement.

"Everyone..."

The young officer raised the tablet in his hand; on the screen, Chu Chen's profile faced the camera, the curve of his mouth appearing somewhat blurred under the compression algorithm of the live stream, yet still clearly distinguishable.

"He—"

The officer's throat felt tight from running too fast.

Finally, he swallowed hard and said: "Chu Chen has appeared. Our technical Expert Group has locked onto his location; he is in New York now! The Metropolitan Opera House. As a special guest, he is currently performing magic at the annual gala of the UnitedHealth Group, and he is—he is giving away money. He is giving away money from that CEO's account to everyone at the scene. He has already given away nearly 7 billion!"

The conference room was silent for about a second.

Then everyone moved at once!

Chen Xiong's coffee cup was pushed aside, coffee spilling out; the dark brown liquid spread across the tabletop, soaking a report on the provenance of British Museum collections, but he didn't spare the puddle a single glance!

Zhou Yun also sprang up from his seat.

Shui Ge closed his notebook immediately.

This sudden news made the previously quiet conference room exceptionally restless!

Chen Xiong was the first to break the silence.

His jacket was only half on, his left arm still in the sleeve, his right hand frozen at the zipper, his whole person like a videotape that had been pressed on pause.

He looked at the officer, his brows knitted into a knot.

"Giving away money?" His voice was very low, but every word seemed squeezed out from between his teeth, "What do you mean 'giving away money'? Explain yourself clearly."

The officer held up the tablet, the line of constantly shrinking numbers on the screen still jumping.

His breathing had not yet fully recovered, his chest heaving, but his words were already organized—in the dozens of seconds it took to cross the corridor, he had already gone over them three times in his mind.

"Chu Chen is standing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, at the annual meeting of the UnitedHealth Group; it is reported that he is there as a special guest. During the performance, he invited a man named Brian Thompson onto the stage—this man is the CEO of UnitedHealth. Then he had someone push out a board with the CEO's bank card balance written on it."

"A total of 15 billion. Dollars."

The conference room was silent for another moment.

Zhou Yun's lips moved: "15 billion?"

"Yes, 15 billion!" the officer repeated, as if emphasizing the rationality of this number: "That guy displayed the number, right there on stage, in front of two thousand eight hundred people, and then he had the audience take out flashlights from under their seats and shine them on the bank card balance written on the back of their invitations..."

Chen Xiong pulled his jacket off his arm and threw it onto the back of his chair.

His movements were somewhat rough, the coat hanger wobbling and making a creaking sound. He walked up to the officer, almost pressing against the young man's face, his voice kept very low, but his tone carried the aggressive skepticism peculiar to an old policeman facing absurd information.

"What exactly is going on? You say he is giving away money from that CEO's account? How is he giving it away? Did he get that person's online banking password? Or did he hack into the bank's system? You tell me, a person standing on a stage, with no computer, no phone, no electronic equipment in his hands, how does he transfer money from someone else's bank account?"

The officer did not back down.

He held the tablet higher, the screen playing the part where Monica was holding her phone and screaming. The woman in the footage was crying so hard her makeup was ruined, and the phone screen clearly displayed a text message from the bank: 200,000 dollars received.

"He didn't operate anything himself. He didn't do anything. He just stood there, said some words, and had the audience shine their flashlights on their invitations. Then—the woman's balance changed. It went from 580 dollars to 200,580."

Chen Xiong's brows knitted even tighter, but his voice was lower than before—not in volume, but in confidence: "What about the bank? The bank wouldn't let him do that. With such a large capital flow, wouldn't the bank's risk control system sound an alarm? Wouldn't the anti-money laundering system intercept it? Transferring over a billion dollars from one person's account to two thousand eight hundred accounts is a top-level abnormal transaction at any bank; the system would lock the transaction in the first second. How did he bypass that?"

The officer placed the tablet on the table and swiped his finger across the screen, pulling up another piece of evidence.

It wasn't a video, but a screenshot—a statement just released by the official Twitter account of Bank of America.

The wording of the statement was brief and urgent, as if written in a hurry by someone whose plans had been disrupted by a sudden event: "We have noted reports of abnormal account activity, and the technical team is urgently investigating. Currently, there are no signs of the system being compromised!"

Chen Xiong stared at that line of text for five seconds. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

Liu Xuemin had been listening the whole time, not saying a single word.

He leaned back in that old office chair, his gaze behind his silver-rimmed glasses passing through the police officer, through the tablet, and through the white wall of the conference room, landing on a place very, very far away.

His fingers slowly stroked his chin, and after stroking it a dozen or so times, they finally stopped.

"Transfers require authorization." His voice was not loud, but everyone in the conference room heard it, because the moment he spoke, everyone held their breath, "Every transaction in the banking system requires explicit authorization from the account holder. Physical tokens, SMS verification codes, biometrics—at least two or more forms of multi-factor authentication. If Chu Chen didn't hack into the system, didn't get Brian's password, and didn't clone his SIM card—then how did he get the authorization?"

The police officer swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

He knew that he could not answer this question either.

"I don't know how he got the authorization," the police officer said, "but I know one thing—the transactions have already been completed. Not one, but two thousand eight hundred transactions. The amounts range from a few hundred to several hundred thousand. Added together, it's already billions. And it's still continuing!"